For one of our customers, me and some of my Whitehorses colleagues are building a new APEX application. We are currently in the last phase before it goes into production. At this stage, users are testing the application intensly, but we are still developing some last-minute features.
Recently I was given the task to upgrade the running test environment with the latest version of the development environment. For this, my teamleader arranged for a 90-minute break in testing, so I could safely deploy without disturbing the test itself.
The upgrade consisted of a few subtasks; the APEX application itself, it’s translations in XLIFF files, a number of database objects and some data.
To ensure a fast import, I started working on some SQL scripts a little earlier and when the time was there, I was ready to start right away.
Because a part of my job is to help the customer understand Application Express better, I used a whiteboard to show all steps that were going to be performed and I was planning on ticking off every step as I went along. In that way the customer could see ‘live’ what was needed to upgrade an APEX environment and how fast each step would be done.
The first few steps were SQL scripts to upgrade some database objects (view definitions, tables, procedures, etc.) and some data (parameters, reference codes and more like that). Thanks to my preparations these were all done pretty quick.
Then came the upgrade of the application itself. This consisted of two exported APEX applications (one for the front-end of the application and one for the back-end) and two XLIFF files (translations for the french and english version of the front-end).
Before beginning I asked the customer what his expectations were. His answer was that he thought that 90 minutes for the upgrade was pretty bold and he doubted I would be done on time. So my challenge was to impress him. And I did, thanks to APEX.
In just a few minutes I imported the 2 applications, seeded the two translations for the front-end and applied both language files.
The complete upgrade was performed in less than half an hour. In just 33% of the time the customer called ‘bold’.
No need to say that the customer was impressed.
So APEX isn’t just a tool to create applications really fast. It also enables you to respond very quickly on findings from testers, so the time impact of upgrades is kept to an absolute minimum. When you’re in a project with a very tight schedule in which every minute counts for developers, testers and management, that can make the difference between a less than optimal product too late, or a full featured application on time.
